


Thinking of You

by cherryistired



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Angst, Gen, Henry's just moping tbh, there's a couple others but they're only mentioned in passing, time loops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 03:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17399093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryistired/pseuds/cherryistired
Summary: Finding himself at the safehouse, Henry spends his time thinking.





	Thinking of You

**Author's Note:**

> This was an old WIP I had started when Chapter 3 came out. With the information from Chapter 5, I was motivated to finish it with the loops in mind.  
> Big thanks to AvaTaggart for helping me edit this!

A single floor lamp sparked, casting a dim light over the cramped room. A Bendy-shaped clock hung on the wall, its arms and legs swinging in time with the ticking of the second hand. Dust and soft piano music floated through the hall outside.

Henry hated it.

Henry did not hate the safehouse specifically, nor did he hate the toon he knew was sitting in the other room, waiting for him. No, he hated how well he knew the safehouse. He hated why he knew it so well. He hated how many times he had been here, how many times he had gone through this story. He hated Joey Drew.

Hate, however, was exhausting. Henry barely could muster up the will to care at all these days, much less care enough to hate.

He sighed, rolled out of the cot he had been sleeping in, and stepped out into the hall. At the end of the hall, Henry knew, was a large room with a stove, some shelves, a table, and a toon patiently waiting for him to wake up. Instead of walking down the hall, however, he stepped into the restroom halfway down the hall. He knew that, had he headed toward Boris, the wolf would have dragged him there anyways to clean up. For the last few loops, he had been cutting out the middleman and cleaning up on his own.

Henry turned on the tap and looked himself over in the mirror. He looked like shit. Ink matted his hair down and stained his skin. His clothes were in tatters and soaked with ink, sticking to his skin in odd places. He had bruises and cuts on his arms and legs, and his back and sides hurt due to all the hard falls he had taken over the past few hours. He was bleeding from his injuries, most notably the sizable cut on the back of his head from getting knocked out by Sammy.

He could remember, dimly, a time - many times - where he had convinced himself, or tried to convince himself, that he was not bleeding ink. That his blood was too thick, that it was darkened by ink, that the room was not lit well enough, that of course it was blood. He would find out, eventually, that he was wrong, but he would forget what Joey said every time he stepped back into the studio.

Henry looked down at the sink he was leaning over. Clean water poured out of the tap, despite the ink that soaked through the entire studio. Considering where he was currently trapped, cleaning up would be oddly easy. The tap would have clear water for as long as he needed it, and the bedroom had a spare set of clean, stain-free clothing for him to change into afterwards. He could not figure out why Joey had even written in these details, but he doubted it was anything close to kindness. It seemed impossible the Joey could be kind, considering how the rest of the story went.

He cupped his hands under the water, splashed it on his face, and got to work cleaning up as best as he could.

* * *

Henry had not always remembered through the loops.

Earlier on, he would forget everything that happened every time he stepped back into the studio. He would relive the horrors of Joey’s story anew, over and over and over again. As time went on and more and more loops occurred, he started feeling a sense of familiarity and deja vu, like he had done this before. He started having flashbacks to events that were similar but ever so slightly different to what he thought he was experiencing for the first time. The seeing tool, when it was given to him, helped to place those feelings, as it revealed messages that he had written - wished he had written - wished he could have told himself. Still, it took him several more loops to piece together what had happened, and several more still to not forget what he’d learned every time a new loop started.

That was hundreds of loops ago.

Nowadays, he knew the story inside and out. He could predict every twist and turn, every new face he would meet and every monster he would kill. Nothing startled him, nothing scared him, nothing surprised him. He would only really react to anything if he was required to by the story. Nothing was new to him.

Fortunately, cards never got old.

Henry began shuffling a set of ink-stained cards as Boris sat himself across the table, eager to play. The toon only knew a few card games - blackjack, poker, and go fish. Henry could teach him a new game, but he would forget it come next loop, so Henry didn’t usually bother with it. Boris did not seem to remember anything through loops. As far as Henry could tell, no one at the Studio did. He was the only one. He was the only one who knew what would happen after these next few days of cards and drawing and rest. He was the only one who knew that Boris was going to be captured and tortured and killed. He was the only one-

The cards flew out of Henry’s hands. He steadied his breathing, bent down, and began gathering them up.

* * *

A single floor lamp sparked, casting a dim light over the cramped room. A Bendy-shaped clock hung on the wall, its arms and legs swinging in time with the ticking of the second hand. Dust and soft piano music floated through the hall outside.

Henry had exactly one thought in his mind: _Leave the safehouse._

He knew this feeling. At one time, he might have mistaken it as his own, excusing it as his own curiosity, or his own restlessness, or his own paranoia. Now, though, he knew that it did not come from him. It came from Joey. It was Joey’s script, tugging at Henry like the strings on a puppet, ordering him to act out the story he had been forced into.

_Find the door lever._

When Henry had first realized the source of those feelings, he had fought back. He spent several loops trying to change the script, whether trying to save Boris or simply trying not to follow the same string of events he knew were coming. He stayed longer in the safehouse than was required by the script. He convinced Boris not to leave it when he did. He kept Boris out of the elevator before Alice tried to kill him by dropping it. He refused to follow the toon to the safehouse in the first place. He did everything he could to fight against the script and save the wolf.

_Find soup for Boris._

Acting out of character, however, was punished. When he refused to leave the safehouse, the Ink Demon found the two of them and killed them both. When he convinced Boris to stay in the safehouse, the Demon descended on the toon and chased Henry as far as he could go, cornering him at the entrance to Heavenly Toys. When he kept Boris out of the elevator, Alice still dropped it with Henry in it, screaming about him hiding her Boris away from her, and captured him anyways. When he refused to go to the safehouse, so did Boris, and they both were killed in the music department by the Demon. Every time he fought back, he was punished, worse and worse.

_Leave the safehouse._

Until he stopped fighting back altogether.

So Henry, with Boris following dutifully behind, left the safehouse.


End file.
